Monday, April 25, 2011

As the next assignment for our ProGen12 Study Group, Ol' Myrt here is reporting on her plans for the coming months.

Assessment of Professional Preparedness

I am prepared to write and speak about research experiences and point followers to authorities in areas where I have little expertise. My genealogical education has been a combination of Family History Center staff training, SLIG, society meetings, NGS & FGS conferences, APG Professional Management Conferences and APG Round Table Discussions.

I had a thought about archiving your webinars. Would the Internet Archive be interested in hosting them? They host books for the Allen County Public Library and audio books for librivox.org, so they might host your video files. Of course the bandwidth needed would be significantly higher, but it costs nothing to ask!

That is a great suggestion. I've been talking with them via email. They say there should be no problem uploading files of 80-100MB. However, their uploading interface always locks up at about 90%. After about ten or twelve false starts over three weeks, I've given up. I had similar problems with their free podcast site many, many years ago.

You asked "What are your plans to hone genealogy research skills? " which set me to thinking if I should have a more formal plan for learning. I have been pondering this for a few days and have decided that, as I am an amateur genealogist, I do not need a formal education plan.

So for my CGD, Continuing Genealogical Development, I plan to look out for educational opportunities that cater for deficiencies in my knowledge (not hard to find) or pique my interest. I will undertake learning via a range of delivery methods: face-to-face, online via webinars or podcasts, radio broadcasts, various print media and by trial and error. I will endeavour to take part in at least one learning activity per week and will continue to document these in my Learning Log.

I will seek out potential learning opportunities by reading blogs, accessing the geneawebinars blog, following the calendar of SAG, reading about events at Unlock the Past, perusing mailing lists and keeping my eyes and ears open.